What is the preferred approach to initialize one-time logic in ASP.NET 3.5 WebForms?

Question

Scenario:

• I have a ASP.NET 3.5 WebForms based website.
• It contains Foo.aspx, Bar.aspx and baz.html (jQuery template).
• Typical traffic seen is Foo.aspx (N times), Bar.aspx (N times) and baz.html (10*N times).
• ASP.NET worker process (aspnet_wp.exe) is recycled say every 2 hours.
• There exists an older API (OldFooService.Init()) which needs to be executed only for the first request of Foo.aspx. OldFooService.Init() initializes a data-store into Cache for the very first flow, but fires blanks for subsequent flows.

Question:

I am currently doing B (see below) since the traffic to Foo.aspx is lower than baz.html and OldFooService.Init() fires blanks after the first time.

Should I use C? Writing to Application_State requires locking (MSDN) and its not guaranteed to be available, so not sure if its worth the effort. Or is there a much better D?

Options:

A) In Application_Start of Global.asax

B) In Page_Load of Foo.aspx once (by checking Not IsPostBack)

C) Option B + use a flag in ApplicationState to run once per recycle of aspnet_wp.exe.

Answer 1

The correct answer here is (A), use Global.asax. B won't work as subsequent GET requests will run the same code. C will work, but is ugly as sin.

I would recommend handling Application_Start or Application_Init in Global.asax, depending on what's required in your legacy init function.

Answer 2

If it's ok for OldFooService.Init() to be called a few extra times in the event of requests coming in simultaneously before its initialized then I would go with C. If it absolutely must run once per recycle, then I would use a static class with some proper read/write locks.

On a side note, is the worker process actually recycled every 2 hours? That seems rather frequent.